


Rocky Shores

by Ashynarr



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Mermaid!America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-10 11:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashynarr/pseuds/Ashynarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleanor grew up knowing humans were dangerous. Emily grew up knowing merfolk weren't to be trusted. When the two of them meet on a stormy summer morning, both of them will realize there's more to what they once knew than they originally imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> For future reference: Eleanor = fem!Ame, Emily = fem!Can, Alice = fem!Eng. 
> 
> (To ease up confusion: I imagine mermaids in this AU having dolphin-esque tails and dorsal fins instead of colorful fish-like tails. Reasons for this being a) I fucking love dolphins and think there should be more mermaids with those features, and b) really there should be more variation in mermaids for obvious reasons.
> 
> …still have gills though. Mrrph. Ah well.)

Eleanor took her first breath when she was four years old.

It was a sort of coming of age ceremony for all young merfolk, though in more dangerous times it marked the point where one could - in theory - outswim a predator long enough to get aide, hence meaning they were much more likely to survive to adulthood. In those days, humans had been included on the list, though with the truce between their races - and the advances the land dwellers had made in medicine and safety - it was more a formality than anything.

Never the less, it meant that the autumn after her fourth summer, Eleanor and two of her age mates were carried towards the shimmery lights above by their respective mothers, and gently eased above the rippling surface. Their first gasps of dry (comparatively) air were quickly followed by surprised clicking, their voices distorted by the thinner medium.

After a few minutes for the children to learn the joys of splashing the surface to make droplets fly everywhere, and some grabbing after the strange fish - seagulls, their parents called them - far out of reach above them in the bright blue sky, they were brought back underneath the waves and taught how to quickly change their breathing between their gills and their lungs. It was, they were warned, one of the only things that might save them if things went wrong.

Eleanor was too enamored with the feeling of sunshine and salty breezes to listen to most of it.

Those days where she wasn't busy with lessons or chores found her playing with the pods of dolphins or whales that occasionally came by, her own gray flukes and dorsal fin easily allowing her to blend in to the casual watcher. Sadly, no pods spoke the same dialect of chirps and whistles as the merfolk, but they still made good playmates and companions for her surface adventures.

At ten, she saw her first human.

Eleanor had been gathering mussels near the shore when something abruptly disturbed the waves above her. Blinking and peering up, she saw it happen again, the small rock sinking past her until it settled to the sand below her. Intrigued, she carefully moved a bit further downshore, away from the falling stones, before surfacing to peer at the source.

It was a girl, just about her age. It took a minute for the mergirl to notice the lack of tail or fin, not to mention that weird covering all over - those were called clothes, right? And those two things curled up by her chest while she threw another stone were called lags? Legs!

For the first pair of legs she had ever seen, Eleanor decided they were very nice.

After a short while the human girl got up and brushed her clothes off, picking up the small pile of driftwood beside her before walking down the beach towards the human town. Eleanor ducked back under the ocean, gills fluttering in excitement to match her grin as she quickly hauled tail back to her own home, the barely remembered mussels still in her arms.

For the next week she was distracted, committing to memory the way the human girl had moved, had bent and walked and made it all seem so easy, almost like swimming. Though she was called out on her inattentiveness in class, she was thankfully never asked to explain just what was on her mind.

Daydreams, though, would not make her any more likely to suddenly grow legs than kissing a green hermit crab would. It seemed the mysteries of the land dwellers would be forever out of her reach, just like the seagulls.

Despite her limitations, Eleanor still wanted to know as much as she could, and so bothered any adult who would talk to her with questions about the land and the beings who lived there.

"It doesn't matter," She would always be told. "There's no need to know about them, so save your interest for more important things."

"But why don't they matter?" She would ask in retaliation. "Don't the humans give us medicine to help us when we're sick? Don't they tell us how the rest of the world is?"

Their faces would crinkle, their eyes and mouthed narrowed. "That's a matter for the chief, not for little girls."

And that would be that. Eleanor pouted at the memories, rolling over on her sleeping stone and tightly hugging the seaweed doll her mother Alice had woven for her. The older mermaid came in soon after, settling beside her daughter and running a hand through Eleanor's short hair.

"Momma, why doesn't anyone like to talk about humans?" She asked, moving closer to get more of the comfort she craved.

Alice just smiled sadly, continuing her small comforting movements. "Because a long time ago the humans did something unforgivable. They took one of our own."

"They did?" Eleanor frowned, looking up at her mother. "Why?"

"I don't know," Alice admitted. "But they convinced the old chief's only son to go up on land, and he never returned. We don't want that to happen to anyone else, so it's best we stay away from them."

"Oh," The young mergirl finally replied, remaining quiet aside from a mumbled "goodnight" as her mother kissed her forehead, leaving Eleanor alone to think.

Her teacher had always cautioned her and her agemates about the dangers of the ocean - humans among them - but it had seemed empty when the humans in the town above never really went out of their way to bother any of them. But if they were dangerous, then why did no one else even mention that boy being kidnapped? Surely that would work better than vague threats from the past to keep them away from the land dwellers!

Eleanor recalled the girl at the beach. She certainly hadn't seemed dangerous, except she had been throwing those rocks, which the mergirl admitted to herself could hurt if they were thrown right at her.

This required investigation.

The following morning was gray and windy, weather that normally would hardly affect the mergirl except for the fact that it meant there certainly wouldn't be any humans at the beach, not to mention it would be impossible to watch them safely with the choppy waves dashing against the rocks.

Only she was proven wrong when the human girl indeed showed up, looking rather desperate as she walked along the beach. She kept looking around and bending down, like she was searching for something. Had she lost something here?

Eleanor followed along under the water, curious as to what she was looking for - at least, until she spotted a glint of something on the sand ahead. Swimming ahead and snatching it up, she looked over the necklace with some curiosity, messing with the clasp on the pendant until it opened, a picture of who could only be the girl with another human - an older boy; a brother? - peering at her from inside.

The mergirl would bet her fins it was what the other girl was looking for. Now how to get it to her…

Throwing it was clearly out of the question - the girl might miss it anyways, and it might damage the necklace. Just swimming up and handing it over seemed simpler, but Eleanor still had her mother's words bouncing around in her head, making her bite her lips at the idea of actually approaching a human on her own.

Wait, what if she swam ahead and left it somewhere easy to see? Then the human would get it back and Eleanor wouldn't have to show herself at all. And she knew from experience that there was a small cluster of boulders up ahead perfect for the job, since one of them had a nice indent perfect for the task.

She darted ahead, barely stopping herself from running into them in her haste. Swimming around to the other side, she pulled herself out of the water enough to find the indented boulder, dropping the necklace in and sliding back into the water with a victorious grin.

Only to panic when the next wave washed the small object out and back into the water, slipping between two boulders before she could think to go after it. Thankfully it wasn't out of reach, but the gap was hard to squeeze even her arm through. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the cord and pulled the piece out, ignoring the scrape on her wrist as she pulled herself up again to replace it along with a small stone to hold it in place.

As if to continue to frustrate her, she had barely started to place it before another wave slammed into her, sending her tumbling towards shore. She hissed at the bruises her tail and arm got from slamming against another boulder, glancing up in time to see the next wave send her tumbling onto the rocks.

Eleanor bit her lip and tried to ignore the grit rubbing against her gills, pushing herself up to look back at the water. Even though it wasn't too far, it felt a lifetime away, not to mention her new fear of being trapped on this beach again by the waters that had abruptly thrown her out here was making her lungs and gills both suck in air in sharp, fast bursts.

"Are you alright?" She heard someone ask her, drawing her attention from her panic to the human she'd been trying to avoid in the first place.

"H-alp-" Eleanor choked out, her mouth slurring the word. Why hadn't she paid more attention when they were learning the basics of human English?

"I-" The human started, hesitating when she looked down to Eleanor's tail, distrust evident in her expression.

"Please," The mergirl pleaded, remembering at the last second the trinket that'd gotten her into this whole mess and holding it forward - a gift or a bribe, depending on how one saw it.

The human gasped. "You found my necklace for me?"

" _Please,_ " Eleanor asked again.

"I- oh, right." She came forward, gently claiming the necklace from Eleanor's hands. Just when the mergirl thought she'd be left to dry out on the rocks, she felt arms wrap under her arms, dragging her back towards home and safety.

When the water was deep enough Eleanor was released, and without hesitation she pushed herself through the waves until she was far enough from shore to avoid a repeat of that experience. Peeking her head back up, she was able to catch glimpses of the human at each peak of the waves under her.

The human girl noticed her as well, because with an awkward wave she shouted, "Thank you!"

Eleanor waved back, repeating the words and grinning at the light smile she got for it before retreating into the deeper waters. Humans weren't all terrible, it seemed, and she'd helped by giving back an important treasure the other girl had lost. Maybe she even knew why the other humans took a merman?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this took way too long for me to write, but i fucking did it - here’s the first part of my contribution to mertober! It’s got Nyo!AmeCan, because lesbians and mermaids go hand in hand obviously. I will probably be continuing this, but at what rate I can’t say because of school and other stories and whatnot.


	2. Thank You

It had taken nearly a week, but she'd done it.

Emily held up the bead bracelet she'd put together, tugging it in a few places to make sure it wouldn't fall apart again. She'd scrounged most of the materials from her mother's crafts box, then carefully strung the beads along the heavier yarn to make a hopefully solid and pretty present for the mermaid who'd rescued her locket from the sea.

(She hadn't meant for it to get lost, but the chain had snapped during her walk and she hadn't realized there was a hole in her pocket until she'd almost gotten home-

-She could still feel the waves lapping around her legs, eager to drag her in even as she did her best to save the girl who'd been thrown on the rocks just to give her her locket back. It was a wonder she hadn't panicked until after.)

Carefully checking the bracelet over again to make sure everything was still in place, Emily put it onto her wrist (she was still leery of leaving things in her pockets after the last scare), put her mended locket around her neck, and set off for the beach, hoping the mermaid hadn't been scared off for good.

It was a nice, sunshiny day, a dramatic difference from last Saturday. Still, few people frequented this part of the beach due to its distance from town; she only did so because her cousin Matthew had brought her here when she was younger, showing her how the sun made it sparkle during the spring and autumn.

(He'd moved away now, but she still kept the spot their secret, because that was what it was. Well, mostly, it seemed, anyways.)

She slowed to a stop on the rocks, looking out onto the calm surface of the water and realizing she had no way of knowing if the mermaid would even be here, or when for that matter.

Emily glanced around, hoping that despite the odds the mergirl would just happen to pop her head out from the water, but the surface remained undisturbed, even by seagulls.

She sat down, pulling the bracelet off to play with while she waited. She didn't want to leave without giving her gift to the other, but she couldn't just wait all day for someone who might not even show up.

...maybe she could leave it in the water for the mergirl to find?

There was the risk of it being lost in the sand below or else some other person finding it instead, but Emily wasn't quite sure what else to do, as if she stuck around too long her family might come looking for her, and it would be difficult to explain why she was out here without bringing up the mermaid and-

Well. Some things were better left not mentioned.

She held the bracelet close to her for a moment, hoping for it to find its intended owner, before flinging it into the waves and watching the rings of water the splash created, the brown and white beadwork sinking until it was too hard to make out.

Smiling in satisfaction, Emily turned to head back home, only to stop as she heard another splash and a small clatter behind her. She turned, seeing nothing and noone nearby, before glancing down to see the bracelet she'd just tossed in on the ground, soggy but intact.

Picking it up, she looked back out to the ocean, trying to make out who was there. "Hello? Are you there?"

No response, no sign of anyone. Emily frowned, running her hand along the bracelet before tossing it into the water again, this time watching where it landed far more carefully-

-there it was! Something gray going past it, presumably snatching the bracelet at it passed by.

This time the mergirl came up to the surface, looking incredibly confused as she held onto the gift. She chirped something, tilting her head as she looked at Emily.

"It's for you!" The human girl replied, trying to wave her hands to show what she meant. "It's a gift!"

"Gift?" This time the mergirl spoke English, though her frown still remained.

"Yes, a gift, for you."

"Gift for me?" The mergirl's eyes suddenly alight in understanding, the bracelet being brought close to her chest. "Thank you!"

Emily huffed, though she was smiling as well as she tapped on her locket. "No, I'm thanking you for giving this back."

The mergirl nodded. "Gift for you?"

"What?" Came the intelligent reply, before Emily realized she meant the locket. "Yeah, it was. It's very important, and I don't want to lose it."

The mergirl nodded again, some semblance of understanding on her face, and it suddenly struck Emily that she didn't even know the other's name.

"What's you name?" She asked.

"Name?"

"Ah," Emily pointed to herself. "Emily."

"E-mi-ly." The mergirl repeated, running her mouth over the syllables carefully before pointing to herself. What came out next was a short burst of clicks ended by a high-low pair of whistles.

There was  _no_  way she was gonna be able to repeat any of that. Her face must have shown that thought, because the mergirl laughed and repeated it, the second time only a fraction more decipherable than the first.

"...maybe I should just try thinking up a nickname instead." Emily eventually conceded, not feeling up to even beginning to attempt anything like that yet.

The mergirl just laughed again, putting the bracelet on her wrist at last before asking, "Again?"

"You want to meet again?" At the nod she got in reply, Emily hummed. "Maybe the same time next week?"

The mergirl frowned, holding up seven fingers in askance.

"Yeah, seven days. Is that okay?"

"Yes!" The mergirl bobbed her head, grinning. "Next week."

"Alright then, I guess that's set." Emily smiled and waved. "See you then."

"See you then!" The mergirl repeated, before diving back under the waves, a flash of gray disappearing as she left.

Emily smiled, turning to head back home while humming under her breath. It seemed, in an absolutely odd turn of fate, that she'd just made a new friend, at least for now.

(The following Saturday, when she arrived at the spot, she'd be startled when something large splashed into the shallows near her feet. It would turn out to be a mussel shell, lovely in its design except for the carefully carved words on one side, spelling out 'ELEANOR'.)

("Is that your name then? Eleanor?"

"El-a-nor?" A thoughtful bob of her head. "Yes!"

"That's a very nice name."

"Thank you!")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cough. Yeah, anyways, here's part two of this probably shorter ficlet with lesbians and mermaids. Took longer than I expected because I literally had to rewrite all my notes because they didn't work with chapter one and it was difficult thinking up a new plot. But hey, this story should, forgiving random plot twists in my writing, come out fairly upbeat and cheerful, so yay!
> 
> Anyways with school and everything, updates are sorta sporadic, but I hope to update everything fairly regularly? At least one big one a week as the absolute minimum. ...this SHOULD have been my big update but it sorta ended up shorter than expected. Maybe between this and the NAH I can pretend I managed it.
> 
> (In other news, I managed 30k words this month! Whoo! Hopefully I can maintain this trend throughout the year, but with school IDK if I can count on it or not.)


End file.
